Published by Douglas Messerli, the World Cinema Review features full-length reviews on film from the beginning of the industry to the present day, but the primary focus is on films of intelligence and cinematic quality, with an eye to exposing its readers to the best works in international film history.

Sunday, January 20, 2013

Jean Vigo | Zéro de conduit (Zero for Conduct)

the wild ones

by Douglas Messerli

Jean
Vigo Zéro de conduit (Zero for Conduct) / 1933

From
the very first scene of Jean Vigo’s short feature, Zero for Conduct, the director establishes the battlegrounds, as
two young boys traveling by train to return to their boarding school, take out
their new “toys”—in a sort of menacing version of “I can do better than
you”—before pulling out cigars, lighting up and smoking—all in the presence of
a sleeping adult, who, as the train stops falls to the floor, described by the
boys as a “dead man.” The sleeping man is their new teacher, who, although more
spirited than the soulless freaks who also teach at the boy’s school, is clearly,
in their minds, already dead.

The two boys, Caussat (Louis Lefebre) and
Colin (Gilbert Pruchon), join their friend Bruel (Coco Golstein) and a new
“pretty” boy, Tabard (based, so it is reported on Vigo himself)—ogled and
touched by several teachers—who befriends them, to immediately plan a revolt. The
various “professors” include the dwarf headmaster, a slimy supervisor who follows
the children about to spy on them and steals their possessions, an obese
chalk-covered science teacher, and mindless housemaster, whom the boys, in
their later orgiastic march of rebellion, tie to his bed, upend it and,
symbolically, crucify him. Only the new teacher, who entertains them with
drawings and a Chaplinesque strut around town, shows any possibility of
offering them an education.

Through most of this 41-minute film, the
boys do little but conspire, as they, like school boys everywhere, pass notes,
secretly meet, magically escape from one teacher’s attention as they march through the city, and are
awarded seemingly endless “zeros for conduct,” restricting them to the school
even during weekends.

Yet, by framing everything through the
eyes of the boys, Vigo creates a magical landscape which seems to be always
fulminating with real violence and a sense of wonderment. The ease in which the
boys slip in and out of beds, climb into and of mysterious windows, and simply
mock their superiors behind their backs is in stark opposition to the freakish
inadequacies of the adults, making the film seem both comic and slightly
horrifying at the very same moment.

The
revolt is planned for the school’s commemoration day, but gets underway,
apparently, the night before as what begins as a pillow fight among the
school’s boys suddenly turns into a mock procession—not unlike the mardi gras celebration in the director’s
À Propos aux Nice—as the camera goes
into slow motion, a snowfall of feathers streaming down upon everyone. It ends,
appropriately, with the crucifixion I described above.

The commemoration ceremony of the next
morning, presided over the Toulouse-Lautrec lookalike, seems to have no
children in attendance, merely stuffed dummies, representing various French
dignitaries. The young foursome is seen moving, by rooftop, off into the
distance, seemingly having escaped their insane oppression.

The
freshness of his vision, combined with Vigo’s obvious distaste for authority,
helped to get this film immediately banned after its showing in 1933 in Paris
for “creating disturbances and hindering the maintenance of order.” It would
not be rediscovered until 1945, and was not shown again until 1946, twelve
years after Vigo’s death. But its influence has been extensive, with François
Truffaut paying homage to it in his The
400 Blows and Lindsay Anderson using its structure for his If….